Computer system administrators, or other computer users, may be called on to oversee specific functions, wherein the administrators may not be fully trusted to supervise execution of the functions. One such example involves collection and reporting of computer system usage data in a pay-per-use computer system. Another example involves use of licensed copies of software programs installed in a computer network.
Instant capacity-on-demand (iCOD) allows an iCOD administrator to acquire a computer system with multiple central processing units (CPUs) not all of which are necessarily active. The iCOD administrator may scale-up processing power at anytime by activating inactive CPUs, and may scale down processing power by deactivating active CPUs.
Pay-per-use systems allow a computer system administrator to control costs by paying only for actual usage of computer system resources, such as CPUs. Thus, in both iCOD and pay-per-use systems, “computing” is provided in a way that is analogous, at least in some respects, to the way in which electricity and other utilities are provided to commercial and residential customers. Using this analogy, iCOD is like adding capacity (e.g. increasing the size of the water main or upgrading to a higher amperage electrical feed) to a system and paying for it at the time it is added. Pay-per-use is like metering (e.g. how much water was transferred or how much electricity was transferred) and paying for the metered amount. In both cases (and others like monitoring software use, etc.) the current state of the system needs to be tracked (either to ensure that unlicensed capacity is not being used, or to record the use of capacity for billing purposes). This tracking can be done over the network, or via a log file. In both cases, the vendor (i.e. the utility) is concerned with the integrity of the data and wants to be able to detect if the data has been tampered with.
Capacity monitoring software on the iCOD computer periodically measures CPU usage data. The CPU usage data may then be transmitted to the computer system vendor for monitoring and control functions. However, certain computers that operate on isolated networks may be unable to transmit the CPU usage data. These isolated networks may be found in high security environments and typically must stay isolated to guarantee against intrusions or accidental dissemination of confidential or sensitive information. This need for security exacerbates the collection of CPU usage data.